ansacs wrote:
Some of the vehicles that are great and why;
*Land Raider Achilles is awesome.
One of the toughest non super heavies in the game, good damage output, and holds a squad to dump out when needed. Immunity to melta truly is a great addition to AV14.

*Deimos Predator w/ plasma destroyer
It is 3 plasma cannon shots a turn without gets hot on an AV13 chasis. They are pretty great and their are a few different ways to get tank hunter and lascannons on it.

*Sicaran
Very nice tank with its Accel Autocannon and AV13 all around. It is even fairly cheap. This is an excellent tank in a number of ways. The basic incarnation is a fast vehicle that can pop skimmers very well and is effective against most light armour and even troops. You can however start putting more and more upgrades on it to make it more effective at a given job. Do you want to push forward aggressively to try getting side armour? Ceramite + AV13 around makes this a pain to kill even at short range and you can add legacies to make it even more tough (it makes some great mobile cover btw). Long range tank hunter? Lascannons + tank hunter legacy and sit back hunt. The main gun is even pretty decent against some flyers.

*Whirlwind Scorpius
This is one of the most brutal tanks available to SM. The damage output one of these can put out is just fantastic. You can even hunt special weapons out of units and it can do a real number on most vehicles.

*Storm Eagle Roc Pattern
This has a great transport capacity and very good weapons (rockets + LC + Typhoon ML). The range on one of these is not to be scoffed. BTW it has DS so DS it in a rear corner of your opponent's deployment zone and fire into rear armour often making it impossible for the opponent's flyers to turn around and shoot you.

*Fire Raptor Gunship
This is probably the most damaging of the SM flyers and will gun down infantry and FMC with impunity. The ability to engage 4 different targets at the same time and 3 of it's weapons to fire at full BS despite shaken, jink, etc. is just incredible.

*Caestus Assault Ram
This is a great vehicle when used to put the right SM unit into melee. The vehicle is very difficult to take down, has good damage output, but the biggest benefit is the ability to zoom on and ram something important and then throw a bunch of angry astartes into the poor buggers nearby. BTW I recommend storm shield equipped units as even if the flyer crashes they are likely to survive the crash and still get to charge. However this is the only way I have seen to get melee honour guard to consistently work.

*Javelin Attack Speeder
These are what speeders wish they were. Great weapon choices at decent prices, AV11, and DS. One of the great uses for this vehicle is to take CML, 2x HK missile, and MM. You DS them behind the opponent (of to the side) and shoot all four weapons (combat speed fast vehicle). These can make advancing for the opponents vehicles very dangerous and are good against Sv3+ MC as well. With the new score as you go the opponent almost always needs to expose some weak armour. The ability to engage from a distance though is the biggest benefit for AV11 skimmers.

*Contemptor Mortis Dread
This thing is incredible with kheres assault cannons. Tough and good firepower.

*Tarantula Sentry Gun
Oft overlooked as it is cheap and does relatively little damage. However it is the best way to ensure you stay on the board if you run a turn 2 reserves army. Get a couple of these on the board next to a comms relay and it becomes almost impossible to alpha strike you off the board. Upgrading them to hyperios makes them more useful but also brings the price up enough you should consider rapiers.

*Rapier battery
These are an incredible value as either quad HB or laser destroyers. They are tough and do a lot of damage for their pts. The only reason you don't hear a lot about them is that they are relatively immobile and vulnerable to CC whereas the SM army has to stay mobile and cannot afford to leave a unit to act as a body guard. They work great as turn 1 support for a turn 2 reserves army.

*Land Raider Proteus w/ Augur Web
The proteus is pretty mediocre but being able to give it scout and either a -1 to enemy reserves or reroll your own reserve rolls can be huge. Give the unit inside a beacon to DS on then DS your units off the AV14 hull. Very useful but it needs a very specific type of list (the scions flyer formation or the GK strike force are good combos for this).

*Vortimer Razorback
This is now the only way to get the old S7 autocannon razorbacks now. It is also psychic so you get an extra WC. I wouldn't buy it based on these rules though as there will almost assuredly be an errata.

*SoB Repressor
This is an excellent transport especially for dominions as they can fire from the firepoints and enjoy an AV13 transport. The HF is good and it has a nice price point.

Well those are my general thoughts of the vehicles in IA2ed2. I have used stand ins for most of them and have some of the models. On the model front pretty much all of these models are gorgeous when properly assembled but make sure you are ready for a major project if you get the larger resin vehicles as there will be significant warping and large resin vehicles tend to be a hassle to assemble. They look absolutely incredible though.